Spybot – Search and Destroy 1.6.0.26 Beta 2

Spybot – Search and Destroy detects and removes spyware. Spyware silently tracks your surfing behavior to create a marketing profile for you that is transmitted without your knowledge to the compilers and sold to advertising companies. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you haven’t intentionally installed, if your browser crashes inexplicably, or if your home page has been “hijacked” (or changed without your knowledge), your computer is most probably infected with spyware. Even if you don’t see the symptoms, your computer may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging. Spybot – Search and Destroy is free, so there’s no harm giving it a try to see if something has invaded your computer.

Q: When will you release a final version of 1.6?A:U.S. Independence Day (4th of July) would be nice. Provided that there’s enough feedback and no bigger problems appearing.

Q:How did you make it faster?A:As you may have read on the news page, we’ve integrated parts of the new file scanner engine designed for Spybot-S&D 2.0, which was rewritten to take many aspects of modern malware fighting into account – those include the fast growing size of the database, the variety of malware and a few other aspects.

Q:Will it still be able to do the same things, or did you give up features to make it faster?A: Actually, some of the new algorithms allow the engine to be even more flexible, so we could add features that we kept back so far to save scanning time.

Q: Is there room for even more improvements?A: The current improvements do not affect the special deep scanning of the Download Directories feature yet, where we’ll also be able to make some improvements, but haven’t decided on the most performant method yet.

Q:Are there any other new things in 1.6 I should note?A:There will be one other huge feature that’ll be addressing another larger type of complaint we’ve received. Stay tuned to the beta forum, and you’ll see.